r/kpopnoir

TW: Body shaming

I haven't listened to Kep1er at all but I've heard a lot of them lately, and I especially heard her name mentioned. I usually put reddit at the end of my queries so I searched "Huening Bahiyyih reddit" and clicked the first post I saw.

Guys when I tell you how sick and twisted the comments I saw were. I was shocked because this subreddit had such a normal title (Kep1er OT8, don't brigade). I didn't know how many members Kep1er had so this was not a red flag for me. Even the first post I read was just a little weird at first since it mostly talked about stans and then I got to the comments and they called her Bahorsie. The sub description exclusively refers to her as P2, which is so disturbing. They call her a leech, ugly, untalented all sorts of horrible horrible things, just attacking everything about this poor young lady. She stole a spot she didn't deserve (despite fan voting?) apparently and that is enough to wish terrible things on her.

It made me physically sick how disgusting this subreddit was and I have to talk about it, because what the absolute hell? I was wondering what she even did to get this sort of repulsive hate and I genuinely couldn't find anything except her relation to Kai. They just worship her brother and think she's dragging him down or something. They hate her sister too for the same reason.

The attacking of her appearance is especially bad. I honestly don't care how shitty someone is, I think attacking their appearance is evil because they are not the only people who look like that. And this girl is genuinely pretty, she just doesn't conform to absurd kpop beauty standards. They also attack her for having plastic surgery after tearing her looks apart? I'm not conventionally attractive either and I just can't imagine what these people would think of my face if she's ugly to them.

It's just evil. Like genuinely these people are evil, and I know nothing about Kep1er so tell me if she's racist or she's done something horribly wrong to deserve this hate. But I cannot get over what I saw. I can't even imagine treating the person I hate most in the world like that. Someone back me up and tell me this is weird AF please.

I’m linking to this post right here because it what inspired me to make this post but ima keep it short and sweet

It’s fucking embarrassing- point blank period. People bring up Rihanna obviously saying that shit was “years ago” and people need to move on cause Rihanna apparently forgave him 😭😭

If she wants to forgive him then honestly good on her ME HOWEVER- fuck that low taper fade toad and his supporters. They act like he wasn’t acting a fool and being abusive AFTER Rihanna- like y’all are fucking dense 😭😭

But cool on you for spending y’all money and time for a colorist women beater and a Diddy defender- more power to ya 😭😭😀😀

The post on Chris Brown inspired this one.

Enter Yung Miami. Another Diddy defender who just won the BET Award for “Best Song of the Summer” for “Spend Dat,” which glorifies scamming and stealing. It is disgusting and couldn’t have been released at a worse time… when Black people in America are literally catching hell form Yahtzees.

(Side note: For those who don’t know, BET has not been black-owned for quite some time.)

To add injury to insult, content creators are acting like Miami is the face of feminist martyrdom and a civil rights icon after India Arie (and many others) rightly called out the song as degrading and the wrong message to send to Black youth.

Predictably, the Whataboutism Olympics went full steam. Why didn’t she/critics call out Black male artists with problematic lyrics (we do)??? Why did this dark-skinned woman call out another “dark-skinned” woman publicly (uhhh because she released the song publicly, duh)? And on and on and on.

I’m not crying for corporations by rolling my eyes at this song…. Nor did Miami write some deep, thought-provoking anti-capitalist anthem. Please 🙄.

Another content creator coined the term “relatable dysfunction” to describe many in the Black community’s obsession with celebrating “hood rich aesthetics” while putting down “Black women in luxury” as not being “relatable” enough. Though criticism and love for this song do not likely fall across class lines (I’m sure there are a lot of working class Black people disgusted by the song), I think the same “relatable dysfunction” spirit explains the popularity of it. To be clear, it has 16M plays on Spotify… not 100M yet… but, like most of today’s music… the controversy is only making it more popular.

It really hurt to see so many of my favs dancing to it online (No KeKe …. NO 😢😭… Raven Symone has to do this for clout… and attention…but not you, Sis!!). It just feels like if something is trending.. people will say “Ok this is what is popular with The Blacks now … so I’d better get on this train.” Enter Queen 👸🏾 India… who I appreciate for calling this song what it is, a disgrace.

Worst of all… this song is mid at best. Definitely giving bland oatmeal, predictable slop.. that’s too basic to be accused of having been written by AI. I heard it for the first time and couldn’t believe THIS was the song people were willing to risk life and limb for. Obvi her fans don’t represent the entire Black community.

But, what’s your take? Is this much ado about nothing or is it hard to see this song gain popularity? Does it sting when the rise of yahtzeeism and all that’s going on in our country is taken into account? Do artists bear any responsibility for the outcomes their music inspires? Or should it be viewed as merely fantasy? Lastly, do you think Yung Miami is being judged fairly or unfairly?

There was another post by someone who said they hope that Black people will stop consuming k-pop because of all of the anti-black/colorist bigotry, and I agree and disagree with the sentiment. Based on my experience, I've been most drawn to k-pop songs and artists because of Black creatives who work on these k-pop projects. So, I feel like Black k-pop fans may find themselves drawn to it because it basically IS Black culture. The blueprint, the foundation of k-pop is undeniably Black. I could never fault any Black people from liking k-pop/k-culture despite the controversy.

I am a very casual consumer of k-pop music, but my sister recently introduced me to BTS through their Arirang Album and took me to the concert. I was really drawn to the songs 2.0 (choreo, mv, and lyrics), Normal, Merry Go Round, Oh Please. Then I went down the BTS rabbit hole and I developed ADHD Limerence over RM (I know, I know). But I digress. Like any sane person, I looked up the creatives behind the album and was pleasantly [un]surprised that a lot of Black creatives worked on it.

With that being said, I'm not sure if this has been done before, I really want to highlight and bring attention to the Black Excellence behind BTS Arirang Album. These are just the ones I know of:

1. Teezo Touchdown
2. JPEGMAFIA
3. Mike Will Made It
4. Kirsten Allyssa Spencer (A.Chic)
5. Ant Clemons
6. Derrick Milano
7. Asheton Hogan/Pluss
8. Brandon Bell/Donut
9. Charles Hinshaw
10. Atia Boggs
11. Livvi Franc
12. Nick Joseph (Choreographer)
13. ALL THE BLACK BACK UP DANCERS

I think the best thing we can do is go out of our way to amplify these creatives, writers, producers, composers, dancers, etc.

Honorable mentions to black faces breaking into Korean screens:

Jenny Park (half Nigerian/half Korean model)

Chase Infiniti (Ateez MVs Model)

Bae Yu-Jin (half Black/half Korean model)

Han Hyun-Min (half Black/half Korean model)

* This isn't a comprehensive list, there are many more. In the words of Issa Rae "I'm rooting for everybody black."

Love that Taemin did this!